Gaëlle Bélem

Gaëlle Bélem (born 1984) is a French writer of Réunionese extraction. She is best known for the coming-of-age novel Un monstre est là, derrière la porte (2020; English translation There's a Monster Behind the Door, 2024), and the historical novel Le fruit le plus rare: ou la vie d'Edmond Albius (2023; English translation The Rarest Fruit: The Life of Edmond Albius, 2025). Bélem has won the Grand prix du roman métis, the Société des gens de lettres André-Dubreuil prize for a first novel, and the Republic of Consciousness Prize. She has been a finalist for the Prix des cinq continents de la francophonie and has been longlisted for the International Booker Prize.

Biography Gaëlle Bélem was born in Saint-Benoît, Réunion. She grew up in modest circumstances and has been writing since the age of twelve. She left Réunion at the age of 17, and studied in Toulouse, France, at the Lycée Pierre-de-Fermat from 2002 to 2005, and subsequently at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University in 2005 and finally at École pratique des hautes études. She also taught in a detention center The novel is set in the 1980s on Réunion Island and is a humorous account of a young girl growing up in a poor and dysfunctional family in Saint-Benoît. An English translation by Karen Fleetwood and Laëtitia Saint-Louber, There's a Monster Behind the Door, was published in 2024. It was longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2025. It won the 2025 Republic of Consciousness Prize, the judges calling it "a compact, comic tour-de-force". The novel won the Prix du roman métis des Étudiants 2025.

In 2025, Bélem released Sud Sauvage, a collection of fantastic stories set in La Réunion that pay tribute to her role models: Guy de Maupassant, Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft. The official launch took place on April 4 at the Médiathèque de Saint-Denis, with text readings in the presence of author Philippe Morvan, set to music by the harpist Séverine Ledoux.

Works

Original publication in French

Translation in English . .

Awards Grand prix du roman métis 2020 and debut novel Prix André Dubreuil du premier roman 2020 of the Société des gens de lettres Republic of Consciousness Prize 2025 for There's a Monster Behind the Door. Prix du roman métis des Étudiants 2025 pour Le fruit le plus rare ou la vie d'Edmond Albius.